Delegates will meet again from 13 to 24 March 2027 for another round of talks on a global plastics treaty. The venue has not been announced. The session is INC-5.4, the fourth part of a fifth negotiating session that has already run well past the original goal of finishing by the end of 2024.
The previous gathering, INC-5.3, took place on 7 February 2026 at the CICG in Geneva. Members used it to elect a new Chair, Ambassador Julio Cordano of Chile.
How the talks began
The process rests on a resolution adopted on 2 March 2022, when 175 countries at the UN Environment Assembly backed “End plastic pollution: towards an international legally binding instrument”. It told the head of the UN Environment Programme to convene a negotiating committee covering the full life cycle of plastics.
Getting there took several steps. A ministerial conference on marine litter and plastic pollution met in Geneva in September 2021. Peru and Rwanda then tabled a draft resolution with support from more than 60 member states, and Japan offered its own version that December. The two texts were merged before the Assembly session opened. A working group met in Dakar, Senegal, in May 2022 to draft rules of procedure.
The earlier groundwork goes back to 2017, when the Assembly set up an expert group on marine litter and microplastics. Its mandate was extended once and its work ended ahead of the 2021 Assembly.
Five sessions, no treaty
INC-1 met in Punta del Este, Uruguay, from 28 November to 2 December 2022. France hosted INC-2 in Paris from 29 May to 2 June 2023, where a Bureau was elected with Georgia, Estonia, Sweden and the United States among its members. INC-3 followed at UNEP headquarters in Nairobi, Kenya, from 13 to 19 November 2023, and INC-4 in Ottawa, Canada, from 23 to 29 April 2024.
The fifth session ran in Busan, Republic of Korea, from 25 November to 1 December 2024. Delegates did not agree on a treaty. They resumed in Geneva in August 2025 as INC-5.2, and that round was adjourned too, with no consensus reached.
Why a binding treaty
Voluntary initiatives have built political momentum, according to the Geneva Environment Network, but they have not been enough. Efforts to date have been fragmented and aimed at downstream measures, so they have not dealt with the problem as a whole. Academics, civil society groups, businesses and international organizations began pressing for a legally binding instrument for that reason.
Plastic is also on the agenda elsewhere: the Basel, Rotterdam and Stockholm conventions, the UN Ocean Conferences, the World Trade Organization and the Special Procedures of the UN human rights office.
Until the March round, the Chair is keeping up correspondence with member states and other stakeholders. The Geneva Environment Network supports participants through its Geneva Beat Plastic Pollution Dialogues.
Sources
- Intergovernmental Negotiation Committee on Plastic Pollution
- Plastics and the Environment
- International Cooperation on Plastic Pollution | Plastics and the Environment Series
